Isuca

Summary: >

A mysterious girl rescued Shinichiro before being nearly devoured by a demon. Shinichiro seems like a normal guy, but contains substantial supernatural energy, which could be handy with Sakuya's duty of defeating spirits. She also happens to live alone and is terrible at domestic chores, while Shinichiro needs a job and excels at them. It seems like a natural fit except that they don't get along well at all, but necessity (and typical anime plot device ) dictates they should try to make it work.

Assisting Sakuya seal spirits is only one of the things to contend with. Sakuya is in a rivalry to become the head of the family, and she has a hidden past which is about to catch up with her.

Thoughts: >

From outward appearances I thought this one looked okay but even into the first episode doubts surfaced. With each episode my discontent grew, and by the end I was.. uh, unhappy with it. Isuca combines many things done before, but does a terrible job at them. On top of that it's blatantly stupid. It has a few good points, but the bad far overshadows the good.

Isuca has terrible characters. Sakyua is a brat, who's role for the entire anime is bitching and throwing tantrums. Her cousin (the only one in this show I didn't mind) has feelings for Shinichiro too, and is superior to Sakyua in every possible way. It makes no sense why Sakyua and Shinichiro are in a relationship (especially with other options), but everything feels forced in this anime so that's par for the course. Shinichiro is such a dope.. actually I won't even talk about him, I'll go on forever. To round out the terrible cast is the antagonist spouting "mwa ha ha, I hate you all" every damn episode. Often Sakyua attempts to fight her, yet even in the last episode, Sakyua is still surprised her arrows are deflected by the same opponent who had done so countless times before. It's this kind of stupid crap that wore me down.

This becomes an anime where nearly every event will have you saying "Why don't they just [...]?". Shinichiro is inches from a button he can't reach, yet holds a sheathed sword in his other hand. An enemy repeatedly repels attacks as the good guys take turns; why don't the all attack at once? Before villain girl can attack, Shinichiro pushes her back, THEN raises his sword - uh, dude you attack with swords first, not push opponents back to get a good swing. It goes on and on like this. But the biggest transgression involves the kissing aspect. Shinichiro can power up everything from a kiss with NO side effects. Sounds simple, but wait this is anime.

The way this anime treats the topic of kissing, you'd swear it was a form of self immolation with the person tearing their beating heart from their chest and eating it. Countless times characters nearly die because they refuse to kiss. When Shinichiro is given a choice between distracting deadly spirits armed with swords OR kissing a girl, he acts as a decoy. See Japan? It's stuff like this causing your population decline. Every struggle in this anime would be trivial if Shinichiro used his power, yet he does not.

Every now and then a gimmick is good for a laugh, and some parts of the background story have their merits. Sakyua's big boobed cousin made this show watchable for me. Raised in an exceptionally strict household, she had a harsh childhood, making her stoic personality somewhat sensible. She struggles to find herself or know what she wants in life, and her story I think could be pretty good - except she's a side character so her story doesn't really matter.

The big plot could go either way, but it looks destined to crash and burn, but who knows. I'd have no problem upgrading the rating if it pulls something interesting out of the hat. Unlikely but possible.

Among other things, there's substantial nudity fan service. Isuca is quite violent at times, with a decent amount of blood drawing attention to the poor animation. Otherwise it looks decent.

Borrowing so much from other anime, most of the work is already done. That makes it hard to forgive the lazy job done putting everything together. The enemy of the week format was pretty dull, annoying characters, and a poor story (thus far) with persistent stupidity make this one better to skip.

Screen Caps: >